Al-qaida Blamed For Ambush

August 13, 2007|By CAROL J. WILLIAMS / Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaida militants holed up in a volatile southeastern Baghdad neighborhood are believed responsible for an ambush that killed five U.S. soldiers scouring the capital for bomb-building sites, a spokesman for U.S.-led forces said Sunday.

After a sniper's bullet felled a soldier Saturday in the Arab Jubour district, his fellow troops from Task Force Marne rushed the house from which the shot was fired, said Janah Hammoud. As they did, an explosion from a pressure-activated blast killed four more soldiers and injured four.

Since the Pentagon stepped up its offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq and other militants with the addition of 28,500 troops sent to Iraq this year, casualties have mounted, as have the complexity of attacks on U.S. patrols. The latest deaths bring to at least 3,690 the number of Americans killed since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003, according to the Web site icasualties.org.

Task Force Marne, which has now lost at least 70 soldiers in four months, has been targeting insurgent bomb-making sites and safe houses in the capital's violence-plagued southern underbelly. The area is also the scene of much of the sectarian killings plaguing the city.

Coalition forces on Sunday also raided suspected al-Qaida in Iraq hideouts in western Baghdad, Samarra, Mosul and Tikrit, arresting 30 suspected militants, including two accused of weapons trafficking for the group, the military reported.

"Our operations continue to target those who associate with and work for al-Qaida in Iraq's leaders," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, U.S. military spokesman.

Meanwhile, embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on the fractious political and ethnic factions to hold a summit within the next few days to renew efforts at national reconciliation.

Elsewhere, mortars landed on a northern neighborhood of the capital Sunday at 9:15 p.m. local time, killing four Iraqis. An Iraqi soldier on vacation was gunned down outside of his home in Babel, and an Interior Ministry source reported that 17 bullet-riddled male bodies were found during the day dumped around Baghdad. *